The Slip-Up
by addieline
Summary: It's not often that guys like Haruka and Rin will slip up and do something stupid, like fall in love. It's not often-but it does happen once or twice, and it really just complicates everything. This is the story of how the two most emotionally stunted people in Japan tried to get their respective shit together.


Haru leaned back in his chair and stretched his arms out behind him, letting the muscles in his neck and back unclench. He groaned and rubbed his eyes, which were tired from the five hours they had just spent glued to his computer screen as he finished assignments that wouldn't be due for weeks, reorganized his desktop ten times, and browsed his favorite online swimwear supplier (his new suits would be arriving in three to five business days).

He glanced at the corner of his freshly wiped computer screen and sighed. Three am. Even if he fell asleep immediately, he would still only get about four hours at the most. Haru had been unable to sleep for a few nights in a row now, and it was all due to the apprehension he'd been feeling about the next day.

Which is today, Haru realized with a slight start. He had been equal parts dreading and looking forward to it for so long that it had gotten to the point where it barely seemed like a real event anymore.

Yet here it was.

Haru stifled a yawn as he shut down his laptop and closed the screen, hoping that he had finally exhausted his brain enough so that it too would be forced to shut down for a while. He rolled his chair away from the desk and maneuvered it across the room to his bed, where he immediately flopped down face first onto his pillow.

As he closed his eyes and let blessed sleep finally wash over him, he wondered for the millionth time what he would say to Rin at the meet tomorrow.

* * *

Haru hadn't always been in love with Rin. It wasn't like it was love at first sight or anything. At first sight it was, "Get out of my face I'm trying to swim here." The second and third sightings were remarkably similar.

Eventually, though, the chatty redhead with the infectious grin grew on him. _Some people laughed like you were missing out on some great joke_, Haru remembered thinking to himself once, as Rin looped an arm around Haru's neck and smiled at him mischievously. _Rin's laugh made you feel like you were in on it, too._

Haru didn't think it was doing the relay that had made him fall in love with Rin initially. Sure, his breath had become a little shorter as he watched his friend dive into the water with the kind of grace they write poetry about; but that was nothing compared to the way the air had whooshed out of his lungs like he'd been punched in the gut when Rin told him and Mako that he was leaving. (He still remembered that particular sensation perfectly; he'd been feeling it a lot the past few weeks.)

No, he must have fallen in love with Rin a good while before the relay. He just hadn't realized it until it was too late.

Not that he probably would have done anything anyways, Haru reflected. They were just kids at the time. And he had never really been the "Let's hug it out and talk about our feelings" type. That was more Mako's area.

Haru glanced over at his friend, who was sitting next to him on the bus and leaning across the aisle to talk with Nagisa, who was attempting to engage Rei, who was reciting swimming theory under his breath.

Haru almost smiled as he turned back in his seat to stare out the window again and brood.

Rin.

Why did everything – _everything_ – always come back to goddamn Rin Matsuoka. Why did he seem to spend every waking moment thinking about the jerk, when the asshat clearly didn't give a damn about him. Haru had been fine before. Really, he had been. Rin was gone, and he had accepted that. He didn't think about him all the time anymore. He didn't replay old conversations in his head and obsess over what he could have done differently; how he, Haru, could have made Rin explain, made Rin apologize, made him stay….

He was done thinking about all that. Really.

And then the douchebag comes back and he is, in fact, a giant douche. And Haru has to wonder all over again what the hell happened between and to the both of them to cause all this weirdness between them – on his side, at least. Could Rin really not feel any of what Haru was feeling? Was he ignoring the pull between the two of them, or could he really not-

"Haru?"

Haru blinked and came out of his reverie to find Mako and the others getting up and gathering their things. The bus had stopped moving; they had arrived.

"Haru, are you okay?" Makoto was asking, looking down at Haru with his second default expression, which was half puppy and half concerned.

"Fine," Haru said, giving himself a little shake and standing up. "Just didn't get much sleep last night."

"You're not sleeping? Are you feeling alright? Are you going to be okay to swim?" Mako questioned him, sounding even more worried than before. He honestly looked like he was physically restraining himself from checking Haru's temperature and getting him some soup.

"What? Haru-chan's not feeling good?" Nagisa hurried back over to their row, with Rei close behind.

"Haruka-senpai, are you alright?"

Haru felt a vague sense of shame as he brushed his teammates off and told them to stop overreacting. They were all focused on the meet, and on the team, and they were so genuinely concerned about _him_. Whereas he had barely given any of them a thought since he got on the bus. Let alone the meet itself.

"We're all nervous about the relay," Mako consoled him. "But it'll be alright. All we have to do is swim; don't worry about winning or not!" Haru nodded and Mako beamed - his first and foremost default expression, half puppy and half genuine happiness.

Makoto, Haru knew, was aware to some degree of what was going on – or rather what had gone on – between him and Rin, and he knew that Mako would more than understand if Haru were to tell him that it wasn't the meet itself that had been keeping him up at night, but rather whom he would inevitably run into there. But he didn't want Mako to have to try to take care of him or make him feel better. He had already had to do that once, and Haru would never forgive himself for the way he knew he had made his best friend feel when Makoto had realized that, for the first time in his life, he couldn't do anything to help.

Haru and the others made their way over to the check-in station, where they were to meet Gou and Amakata-sensei. Mako was attempting to soothe Rei, who was sputtering about something Nagisa had said about his speedo. Haru wondered if the two freshmen had done the deed yet.

"Oh thank G-look, there's Gou and Sensei!" Mako announced, looking hugely relieved to see their manager and teacher waving at them from the check-in area up ahead. Nagisa and Rei, distracted from their one-sided conversation about the pros and cons of swimming with a speedo on as opposed to with nothing on, turned their attention towards their manager as she came jogging over to the boys.

"Gou!" Nagisa greeted their manager. "How's the competition look?"

"I told you, it's Kou," Gou corrected him automatically, but her heart was really in it and she flapped her hands impatiently to stifle the others' greetings. "Listen! I have news – I only just found out -my brother's school is already here!"

"And I repeat: how's our competition looking, Gou?"

Gou scowled at Nagisa, which fazed him not at all, and then she turned worried eyes to the group at large. "The relay team looks tough – really tough. They're all seniors, and their muscles are glorious," she added with a sigh of admiration.

"Ah, Gou-chan?" Mako prompted her patiently.

"But that's not important," Gou said hastily, snapping out of her daydream and struggling to get her scattered thoughts in order. "What's important is – well what you should know, is - " Gou bit her lip and glanced over at Haru uneasily. "My brother…Rin, he's…."

Haru's stomach lurched; he thought he knew what Gou was trying to tell them – and why she seemed so reluctant to say it out loud - but surely, _surely,_ Rin couldn't be-

"Gou-kun!" an excited voice called from somewhere close by.

"Don't call me – oh never mind," Gou sighed in defeat as the captain of the Samezuka swim team joined the group.

"Good to see you all again," Mikoshiba said with a genial smile. "You guys are competing in the relay today, right?" He addressed his question to the four swimmers.

"Yep!" Nagisa spoke up excitedly. "Gou was just telling us to watch out for your guys."

"Actually, you'd better," said Mikoshiba with a grin that was only half joking. "Now that Matsuoka - "

"Mikoshiba – wait –" Gou tried to interrupt desperately, "- I haven't –"

"-is on the relay team." Mikoshiba finished obliviously. Gou buried her face in her hands, and three of the members of the Iwatobi swim team reeled with shock. The fourth member grimaced as his suspicions were proven correct.

"Eh?!" the exclamation was all that Nagisa could articulate.

Rei tried to cover up his initial shout of surprise by pushing his glasses up on his nose and doing his best imitation of Haru's current expression. (He was about as successful as you would expect.)

Makoto gaped in disbelief, and then turned to his best friend in wordless dismay. Haru kept his expression blank and turned his head slightly away; Mako had always been able to read Haru like a book, and Haru didn't want to think about what his friend might deduce from the expression in Haru's eyes.

"Idiot!" Gou burst out furiously, punching a bemused Mikoshiba on the arm – largely ineffectually. "I never got a chance to – " she broke off abruptly as, for the third time, a newcomer approached the group. Personal feelings aside, at that moment Gou felt that she would have done anything to stop the boy she saw walking towards them from behind Mikoshiba.

"Captain," the boy began as he got closer, looking up from his cell phone; otherwise he might have noticed with whom his captain was conversing, and he might have waited until later to ask about the schedule of the meet. Or perhaps, Haru thought as the newcomer's voice registered in his brain and he looked up and around for the speaker, already knowing whom he would see; perhaps this train wreck was simply preordained.

Haru settled his gaze on the boy's feet, at first, as if that would make it easier. He took in the well-worn sneakers, then raised his eyes a little higher, and then a little higher still, traveling up the blue sweatpants and then darting immediately to the matching blue and white abdomen, skipping over the in-between area hastily. One of the boy's hands was holding a cell phone lazily at his side, and the other was thrust in the pocket of his sweatshirt. His zipper was only done up halfway, revealing the white t-shirt underneath – or maybe it was a tank top; one really couldn't tell just by glancing at it, but-

"_Haru?_"

_What is it about the way he says my name?_ Haru wondered as his stomach flipped again. _And doesn't he know I'm trying to stall, here?_

But one can't put off the inevitable forever - especially when the inevitable is standing literally three feet away.

So Haru braced himself and warned his stomach to keep its shit together as he finally looked up and locked eyes with the redheaded boy standing in front of him, staring at Haru with a wide-eyed incredulity that reminded him of another boy, from what felt like such a long time ago.

A wealth of emotions flooded Haru's breast, from panic, to pleasure, to anger, to_ dammit-no-one-should-be-allowed-to-be-that-hot._

As always, though, he kept a lid on it, and made sure his own voice would remain level and cool before he replied, "Hey, Rin."


End file.
